Big risks remain in energy and climate change arenas

One policy risk is that Americans could get lazy about energy as supplies grow.

Author Michael Levi will speak at the Jacksonville World Affairs Council on Tuesday.

No country is doing as well as it should to address climate change, but the U.S. is doing better than most could have imagined a few years ago, says a scholar on energy issues.

Changes in the economy and effective government policies have helped improve this country’s performance, and Michael Levi says that increased options for energy resources make him more optimistic about the future of climate change.

But in this time of rapid transformation in energy resources and consumption, Americans need to change the debate over energy policy, which has been focusing on the same issues since the oil crisis of the 1970s, says Levi, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations who will speak to a sold-out Jacksonville World Affairs Council event Tuesday evening.

“Let’s at least have the right political fights over energy,” he says.

The “right fights” include making choices that best address climate change, the economy, international relations and national security.

Historically, proponents of oil and gas have championed capacity expansion while opposing ambitious fuel standards and government subsidies for renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal.

Environmentalists have been obstinate about expanding fossil fuel production while advocating fuel efficiency and a growing dependence on renewable resources.

Levi, who is a proponent of what he calls “most of the above,” says both sides are often effective at thwarting the other’s progress, but better energy policy could develop if the differing interests compromise and work toward loftier goals.

In his latest book, “The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America’s Future,” Levi outlines the important role government must play in implementing energy policy.

“The job of government is to step in where markets fail to deliver on big economic, environmental and security objectives,” Levi says, “essentially, to get the incentives right to empower the market to do a better job of delivering on our big goals.”

For example, government needs to create incentives to lower fuel consumption in order to deal with climate change and to reduce oil consumption for national security reasons. And government needs to set rules that enable the private sector to take advantage of natural resources without harming local communities.

Recent expansion of oil and natural gas has made the U.S. far less dependent on foreign sources. And fuel-efficient vehicles have reduced demand for foreign oil.

Nonetheless, big risks remain, and Levi expresses concern that in the wake of increased production and lowered consumption, the wrong policy decisions could result.

One policy risk is that we could get lazy, thinking that increased natural gas is solving the climate change problem or that domestic oil production is solving security problems and that we don’t need to continue to confront those issues.

Another policy risk is that the wrong environmental policies could result in a local backlash if the policies aren’t right.

The necessary “right fights” would not include the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline, which Levi says the Barack Obama administration should have nipped long ago.

“As a matter of energy substance and climate substance, it is not very consequential,” he said. “But as a matter of bilateral relations [with Canada] and domestic politics, which will shape his ability to make future choices on energy and climate, it is consequential.”

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. P.J. O'Rourke

941 points

Grendel53

Sunday, February 9, 2014 @ 3:30 am

Once again, I'm not going to concede "anthropogenic climate change". The unexplained 15 year plateau in warming, the cooked books, the religious-like zealotry, all cause me to cry "Halt" to the clamor for new restrictions and economy killing regs. Let's get our economy going, keep researching ways to reduce pollution and give OPEC the big middle finger.